May 30, 2015

Science Magazine Withdraws Published Survey Study




[From article]
Science magazine Thursday formally retracted a highly touted article about a study gauging the ability of openly gay canvassers to shift voters’ views toward support for same-sex marriage.
Columbia University political science professor Donald Green, one of the article’s authors, requested the retraction on May 19, saying co-author Michael LaCour had been unable to produce the raw data that was used in the study.
[. . .]
The magazine said it based its retraction on misrepresentation of cash incentives for survey participants, false statements about financial sponsorship of the survey, and the inability to produce original data, “which makes it impossible to verify or alleviate concerns about statistical irregularities.”
[. . .]



The study claimed that opinion changes produced by the straight canvassers tended to fade within a few weeks and those voters reverted to their previous, less favorable views of same-sex marriage. It said that the changes in viewpoints produced by the gay canvassers persisted nine months later.
Green began to have misgivings about the study after the integrity of the data was called into question by two graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, who tried to launch a similar study

http://nypost.com/2015/05/29/science-magazine-retracts-gay-marriage-article/

Science magazine retracts gay-marriage article
By Fox News
New York Post
May 29, 2015 | 12:53pm

No comments: